OkCupid admits recommending 'bad matches' to see if users would fall in love

OkCupid admits recommending 'bad matches' to see if users would fall in love

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The online dating site OkCupid admits they recommended poor matches to see if users would fall in love.

"…we took pairs of bad matches (actual 30% match) and told them they were exceptionally good for each other (displaying a 90% match.) Not surprisingly, the users sent more first messages when we said they were compatible," co-founder Christian Rudder wrote in a blog post titled 'We Experiment On Human Beings!'

Rudder defended the experiment on the power of suggestion.

"…guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work," Rudder wrote.

-- Other experiments on users

OkCupid also conducted an experiment on the value of the user's picture versus the text written in their profile.

"Essentially, the text is less than 10% of what people think of you," Rudder wrote. He cited a profile of a woman with no text in her profile that scored in the 99th percentile for personality.